Traditional video compression/decompression processing typically strives to compress video signals to reduce bandwidth and needed memory usage. Over the years, systems have been developed which compress a video data stream, using certain algorithms, and then decompress the video data stream, to achieve acceptable image clarity. The compression can be achieved by way of certain algorithms, which, for example, predictively calculate the movement of pixels of a video image on a frame-by-frame basis.
Transmission of uncompressed video requires very large bandwidth and is impractical in many cases because bandwidth is both limited and expensive. As a result, a much more efficient way of transmitting video is to compress it before transmission. Because video material is highly redundant, it can be efficiently compressed. The state of the art video coding standard at the time this document is written is the H.264/JVT/AVC/MPEG-4 part 10. This standard introduces a number of tools that allow it to achieve approximately 50% better compression performance as compared with the previous state of the art compression standards, such as MPEG-4 or H.263. However, even with these gains, better compression is still desirable. For example, a cable, phone, or satellite company with certain available bandwidth would be able to offer its customers more video channels if better compression techniques were available and acceptable subjective quality could be maintained.
Accordingly, a need exists for improved systems and methods for compressing and decompressing video data.